Is Iran victorious in Syria?

There has been much talk about Syria in Iran as the leadership in Tehran continues to imply that it has achieved many victories. Yet, according to Rahim Safavi, a high-ranking military official under Khomeini, Iran’s expansion has reached as far as the Mediterranean and the Palestinian border at Ras An-Naqoura. During his last visit to the area, Safavi confirmed that both Iraq and Syria have been taken under Iran’s wing and influence.

Does Iran speak with such confidence because the government knows precisely where it would like its borders to be, and how to spread its power and control? Or are these words nothing more than estimates and speculation? Is this just propaganda with which Iran seeks to increase its influence as it negotiates with the outside world?

Taking a step back from the triumphant tone of political discourse in Iran, there are several factors that confirm that Iran and the Iranian leadership consider themselves victorious in Syria; and that this conviction is based on information that Iran was able to enforce its preferred reality on the ground in Syria and the Middle East in general.

According to this view, Iran was able to create a military reality that is quite difficult to overcome, especially as it took control of Syria from virtually every angle, from its heart in Damascus to the coast. Iran has gained control of a country that is geographically-central to the Middle East; the mountains of Syria provide direct access to other key areas in the region, including Lebanon, parts of Israel and even southern Turkey. In addition, the mountains function as a sort of natural radar facility which allows Iran to observe key parts of Iraq and southern Lebanon. In this way, Tehran has achieved a solid and coherent map covering the heart of Syrian and its transportation network.

This area also constitutes the largest part of Syria as a whole, in terms of geographic facilities, military capabilities and war zones, in the wider military sense. This area is also considered to be central to economic life and sustainability due to its access to Syria’s water resources.

Iran has created a map made up of scattered pockets of territory in Syria’s north, south and east. These are either classified as isolated geographic areas that do not pose a real threat or are home to organisations that, secretly, Tehran is backing financially.

Perhaps the largest victory for Iran is that it has been able to infiltrate the Syrian political system completely and transform it into nothing less than a branch of Iran’s own system. The latest data reveals that Iran has allocated a permanent budget for the Syrian regime. It is no longer a secret to anyone that this budget finances everything from everyday issues, to weapons allocated to Syria and to funding the Syrian army. According to one Iranian leader, Syria has now become Iran’s thirty-fifth province.

Tehran’s penetration of Syria was made possible thanks to its consistent military presence in the field after Al-Assad lost control of the country, leading to the collapse of the regime’s network a year after the onset of the revolution. In fact, all of the Syrian army’s tactics had failed and its security agencies were on the verge of meltdown.

All of this began to unfold in the summer of 2012 when revolutionary battalions were about to gain control of Damascus. It was at this point that the Syrian regime became powerless and Iran began to orchestrate the direction of the war in terms of strategy and execution. The situation had escalated to the point where Syrians and Assad’s own soldiers were prohibited from entering certain areas of the capital. Even Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged this and said, “If we did not intervene, Damascus would have fallen in a week.” In fact, Iran has stated that Al-Assad’s survival up to this point is due to the fact that the Tehran government wants him to be there.

Of course, Iranian interference in Syrian affairs predated this moment as it was involved in every stage of the revolution. From the very beginning, Iran was involved by training Al-Assad’s supporters in Iranian camps and this would later facilitate the creation of the so-called national army, as a copy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

None of these measures succeeded in bringing an end to the revolution, which was growing militarily in the field. Thus, it became even more important to protect the Assad regime and its strategy, especially in Damascus. A central component of this strategy was to contain the rebels in their areas as part of the preliminary stage. Its implementation started in certain areas and would later unfold to achieve breakthroughs in other places.

The areas of particular focus were those with strategic and supply routes connecting the Syrian coast and Damascus, as well as areas that could function as bridges between Syria and Lebanon. Iran’s plan was successful because of how easy it was to cut off the revolutionaries’ supplies and the fact that there also exist areas that are not pro-revolution and others that are close to Hezbollah.

Another important factor that explains Iran’s victory in Syria is its ability to penetrate the Arab region after it excluded both Iraq and Syria from its geographic and humanitarian fabric. This is especially so in light of the sectarian strife in both countries which seeks to eradicate the Sunni Muslim presence and render it a non-active and non-influential political player. The political trends in Syria and Iraq are aimed at reshaping the region to suit Iran’s political interests and improve its image in its interactions in the international community in terms of conflicts and dialogues.

The importance of this factor centres around the fact that it will keep Iran at the forefront of what is happening in what remains of the Arab region and it will allow Tehran to rework the organisational structure of the entire region under its zone of influence, which is one of Iran’s core strategic objectives.

However, this victory, according to Tehran, is based on the perception that it has imposed its presence on the Arab regimes that support the Syrian revolution, which are primarily the Gulf countries. Iran’s growing presence in the region forces them to reconsider their internal security since Iran believes that they are caught in a bind between the loss of Syria and Iraq on the one hand, and the results following the upcoming deal with Yemen. All of these factors place these countries in a position where they will not only have to face a new reality, but also prepare themselves for a potential confrontation with Iran.

Certainly, the reality of the picture cannot be truly perceived in the same light that Tehran would like and while there are certain factors that are true in the sense that Iran can use this perception to its advantage both internally and externally, one must also remember that these assumptions are based on changing data and not necessarily facts that are set in stone. Thus, one cannot build upon or take these conceptions seriously because they are currently nothing more than clear-cut attempts to mislead the outside world that Iran has achieved a victory that has yet to happen.

All of the parties involved in Iran’s messages to the outside world know full well the true extent of the exhaustion and weakness that now affect Iran due to its involvement across the region. Iran has spent the bulk of its reserves to engage in a battle where victory is essentially impossible on all levels.

Many Iranian leaders, those who are facing problems on all sides, are well aware that the propaganda they have created is simply a demonstration of their imperialistic ambitions more than it is a declaration of a victory that they have supposedly achieved. It is also certain that western powers will soon adopt strategies that will cause Iran to fall further by draining all of its energy and resources. Iran will find itself caught in the vicious cycle of strategies relating to the Syrian conflict, with no way out.

The western ambition to distract Iran with the Syrian issue will lead to its sense of defeat for the time being. It is also certain that the West would like to see this issue reflect on Iran’s internal social fabric, as it is a country with a diverse ethnic mosaic of many different groups. Iran’s social structure is extremely sensitive due to the large number of internal factions in the country and the only thing that has held the country together and kept it stable until this point is a strict central policy.

What is expected now is that Iran’s interventionist policies will weaken the country significantly as they are beyond its military and political capabilities. Iran will likely experience disintegration much like the Soviet Union, and eventually self-destruct.

Iran has rushed to announce victories it has not yet achieved and will never achieve. Despite everything they face, the Syrian rebels are still strong and quick enough to keep the ground moving under the regime’s, Iran’s and its allies’ feet.

Estimates indicate that Tehran’s main concern is achieving a victory through the media first and that it will follow this with a military victory. Yet, its military momentum has reached its peak and it will stop at the borders of Iran’s allies, that is, with a western border on the Damascus-Homs highway. Iran is left with little to do other than to sit and wait for factors to change and to see what destiny has in store.

Translated from Al Jazeera net, 29 June, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.